Complete CRIM1000 Notes

CRIM1000
Defining and measuring crime
Crime refers to violations of social norms
Deviance: the behaviour that violates the normative rules, understandings or expectations of social systems
Disorder: triggers feelings of crime; gives impression that nobody cares
Physical: littering, graffiti
Social: loitering, loud arguments, public drinking
William Sumner (1906)
Folkways: simple everyday norms i.e. personal space
Mores: broad societal norms i.e. adultery
Laws: strongest norms i.e. murder
Ways of defining crime
Formal legal definition: defined by state, proscribed by criminal law
Social harm: criminal and civil offences
Cross-cultural universal norms: crime which does not vary e.g. murder
Labelling: only exists where there is a social response to an activity i.e. cannabis
Human rights: any violation of a human right, regardless of whether state-recognised i.e. racism, sexism
Human diversity: oppressive or unequal circumstances i.e. power relations
The act & the intent
Both must be present to constitute a crime
- Actus reus: conduct that caused the crime
- Mens rea: prescribed state of mind
Legal personhood: all adults have the necessary mental capacity to make judgements and take responsibility
for actions (children under 10
Measuring crime
Fundamental to development of criminological knowledge
Allows us to:
• Understand nature and extent of crime in society
• Track crime trends and emerging problems
• Assess limitations of crime statistics
• Evaluate theories of criminal behaviour
Administrative data sources: Data recorded by police, courts, corrections and other criminal justice
agencies
Self report studies: self-reported crime and delinquency surveys or victimization surveys
Issues in measuring crime
• Non-reported crime (dark figure of crime) e.g. domestic violence, sexual assault
o People do not report due to fear, distrust of police or do not view as a crime
• Reliability and validity can be problematic
o Crime funnel: Very small minority serve custodial sentence from original number of offenders
• Low funding
• Misses high rate groups
• Rely on respondent truthfulness, memory and understanding
• Reporting issues e.g. falsification and undercounting
• Does not reveal victimless crimes i.e. forgery, drug dealing Trends in crime
Age-crime curve
• Peak from 15-25 years consistently over all races, genders and cultures
Drop in crime rates (2001-2008)
• Drop in unemployment
• Type of crime – less detectable due to technology
• Baby boomer generation – older, not at offending age
Increase in prison custody rate (incarceration)
• Indigenous and women groups increasing
• Males continue to dominate crime figures
Moral Panics
An episode, condition, person or group of persons that has been defined as a threat of societal values and
interests
Act can be (and often is) real but is exaggerated
- Compared with other reliable, valid, objective sources
- Compared with other serious problems
Characterised by ‘stylised and stereotypical’ representation by the mass media
E.g. Salem witch hunts, drug use, 1960s sexual revolution
Requirements for a moral panic
• A suitable enemy – a soft target, easily denounced
• A suitable victim – anybody could be next
• A consensus that the act was not an isolated event
• An event which is deceptively ordinary and routine
• Warn of a deeper, more prevalent social condition
Deviancy amplification spiral
Initial outbreak of abnormal behavior generates enormous media reaction
 Forces people to intervene more strongly in subsequent disturbances, increasing the numbers arrested
 Fosters public concern
 Rising number of arrests seems to justify initial concerns and policing strategies
Actors in drama of moral panic
• Mass media
• Public
• Agents of social control
• Lawmakers and politicians
• Action groups
Cohen (1937):
- Investigated the rise of ‘moral entrepreneurs’ to media personalities and how the press played up the
‘danger’ represented by working class young people
- ‘Folk devils’ are a person/group portrayed by the media as outsiders and deviant, who are blamed for
crimes and social problems
- Process of deviance amplification culminates into a moral panic
Cohen’s 7 clusters of social identity:
• Young working-class, violent males
• School violence, school bullying, school shootings • Psychoactive drug users
• Paedophilia/satanic rituals
• Sex/violence and the role of the media
• Welfare cheats/single mothers
• Refugees/asylum seekers
Impact of Moral Panics
• Shape definitions of crime and crime control
• Producing legal charges e.g. ethnic youth gangs
• Symbiotic relationship between police and media – sensational view of crime
• Produces fear of crime
• Shift toward neo-liberal forms of governing – creating ‘responsibilised citizens’
Influence of media messages
• Passive recipients of media messages
o Traditional emphasis on power e.g. propaganda in WWII
o Through new communications technologies audiences are passive receptors of messages
• Exercise our own decision-making power
o Audiences choose to consume what they will consume
o Interact actively with media material
• Perceptions of crime are ‘mediated’ or influenced by our own conditions and characteristics
Gender & crime
Correlate of crime: a factor related to crime but not necessarily a cause i.e. social class, sex, race or age
Approaches to gender and crime
Criminology has historically neglected gender and focused on generalized explanations e.g. women’s
inferiority or assuming biological or psychological differences between gender
Freda Adler (1975): women would become more violent as they moved out of traditional social roles
Rita James Simon (1975): shift out of traditional roles opens more opportunities
Generalisibility: based on men; can they be modified to include women?
Gender-ratio problem: why are men violent? Or why aren’t women violent?
Significance of gender and crime
Strongest predictor of offending and involvement
- Men are far more likely to commit an offence than women across almost all categories
- Homicide and violent assault perpetrated by young men (responsible for 9 in 10 homicides)
- Serious crime arrests highest under males under 20 years
Gender and victimization
- Men account for majority of victims of violent crime
- Women outnumber men in rates of some forms of victimization i.e. sexual assault
- Women more likely to know their assailant (81% of female victims of assault)
Explanations of gender-crime relationship
• Lombroso: typical female traits ‘piety, maternity, underdeveloped intelligence and weakness’
• Otto Pollak: actual crime rates are equal but men are socialized to treat women
• Heidensohn: women’s lower crime rate explained in terms of patriarchy and social control
• Messerschmidt: socialized to be ‘female’ so committing crime a strategy to construct themselves as men Race & crime
Race-crime relationship
Race: socially and historically constructed categories and identities – differs from ethnicity which highlights
the shared historical, linguistic and cultural values of a particular group
Some racial minority groups are over-represented in crime statistics and institutionalized settings
- Indigenous population much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated
Most violent crime is intra-racial
Explanations for disproportionate minority contact (DMC)
Differential involvement: over-representation results from racial differences in the incidence and the
seriousness of offending (they offend more)
- No strong evidence for this theory
Differential treatment: results from decision-making processes that operate different for members of
different racial groups (they are stopped, detained and arrested more)
- Disproportionately reside in impoverished communities
- Experience social and economic exclusion
- Less likely to complete compulsory education
- Have the highest rate of unemployment
- However, taking into account risk factors and offending behaviour does not reduce the chances of
minority contact with the criminal justice system
Theories of the race-crime relationship
• Conflict theorists: DMC result of race and class-motivated disparities
• Social control theory (Hirschi): crime most commonly perpetrated by individuals who lack strong bonds
• Subculture of violence theory (Wolfgang): certain groups view violence as an appropriate response to
what are perceived as threatening situations
• Social disorganization theory (Sampson): high rates of crime are largely the result of a heterogeneous
and impoverished social ecology
• Critical race theory: concerned with the role that law plays in constructing ‘race’ and reproducing
majority racial power
Social class & crime
Class system: social ranking based primarily on economic position in which achieved characteristics
influence mobility
Indicators of social class:
• Income and wealth
• Occupation
• Education
• Power
Elements of poverty: low income, empowerment and resources, preventing full participation in society
- Material deprivation: lack of basic needs, housing, employment, physical and mental health issues
- Social deprivation: lack of access to labour market, education, social support or recreation
Class system in Australia
• Upper class – high income, occupation prestige, education
• Middle class – middle income, two incomes needed
• Working class – low income, service sector employment
Subjective definition and boundary between classes Theories of social class
Karl Marx: class defined by relationship to production
- Whether one owns and/or controls the wealth and production (bourgeoisie) or survives from the sale of
their own labor power (proletariat)
- Law and criminal used by the state to support the interests of the bourgeoisie
Max Weber: class location determined by people’s market situation, skills or education
- Sought a solution in equal opportunity within a competitive class sytem
Early explanations of the class-crime relationship
Guerry (1829): measure of wealth by taxation, literacy
- Wealthiest regions of France had the highest rates of property crime
- Most educated areas had highest violent crime rates
Quetelet (1828): some individuals committed more crime than others
- Young male, unemployed and under-educated
- Tended to commit crimes in wealthier areas
Conclusions about class-crime relationship
Studies of aggregate crime rate and economy are mixed i.e. some find negative relationship (unemployment
rises, crime does not rise); others find positive relationship (unemployment rises, crime rises)
Some evidence to suggest economic inequality matters in relation to crime; most likely conditional on other
community factors e.g. low social support, collective efficacy and social capital
Age & crime
• Universal agreement on the shape of the age-crime curve
• Young people generate a disproportionate amount of crime
• Crime rates rise rapidly throughout the adolescent years, peak in late teens then steadily decline
Criminal career: the length of one’s offending over life course
Career criminal: chronic offender
Participation: whether person has ‘ever’ committed a crime
Frequency: rate of criminal offending of individuals
Onset: beginning of a criminal career
Desistence: end of a criminal career
Age-Crime views
Traditional view: age-crime curve is ‘invariant’
- Changes of crime rate due to changes in frequency
- Number of offenders stays the same but each offender commits fewer offences
- All offenders and offences have the same age-crime curve
Developmental perspective: change in crime rate caused by change in participation
- Number of offenders declines but a few chronic offenders still commit a substantial amount of crime
- Those who continue to offend are ‘career criminals’
Invariance thesis (Gottfredson & Hirschi)
Criminal propensity position: some people are more prone and others less prone to commit crime
- Each individual’s propensity to engage in criminal acts is relatively stable after age 8
- Crime declines over time for all offenders
Hypothesize that self-control explains individual propensity to commit crime
- Crime a by-product of those with low self-control who come into contact with illegal opportunities
- After age 8 self-control is set, therefore criminality not affected by criminal justice interventions Dual Taxonomy (Moffitt)
Offenders have different trajectories over their ‘criminal careers’
Life Course Persistent (LCPs)
- About 5%
- Problem behaviour stable over age periods
- Etiology linked to pre/postnatal care plus environmental conditions
- Neuropsychological deficits underlie temperament, developmental milestones and cognitive abilities –
interaction with environment creates antisocial personality which is fixed
Adolescent Limited Offenders
- Begins in early adolescence
- Large group and low versatility (only in some circumstances)
- Etiology linked to maturity gap (dependent on parents but desire independence) and peer influences
- Been responded to with consistent and reasonable discipline
Age-graded theory (Sampson & Laub)
Wanted to find out what happened to offending rates into middle and old age
Research on Glueck and Glueck data found:
- Enormous variability in the peak ages of offending and desistance
- Crime declines with age for all offenders
Causes of criminal offending change over the life course
- Continuity explained by ‘cumulative continuity’ (continued failure from an early age)
- Desisting from offending can be explained by the quality and strength of social ties
Implications of this theory:
- Long term incarceration is ineffective
- Early intervention is good – family context and structure is significant
- Focus on turning points e.g. employment prospects, education completion, marriage, parenthood
Early aggression (Richard Tremblay)
We all have a propensity for early aggression
- Controlled by social learning by 2-4 years
- Only small proportion continue
Individual theories of crime
Basic principles
• Crime explained by examining individual differences between people
• Individual differences linked to certain biological and/or psychological factors
• Crime is something in the ‘nature’ of the individual
• Criminals are different and defective and therefore biologically and psychologically ‘inferior’
Historical evolution of theories
Popularity changes over time:
- 19 century-1930s: Biological theories widely accepted
- Popularity lapse due to rise of sociological explanations
- 1950s-1970s: re-emergence of individualistic theories
Early biological theories:
- Crime is not a rational behaviour but a result of inborn abnormalities
- Crime is the result of biological defects, thus criminals are biologically inferior
Phrenology (Gall)
Moral and intellectual faculties are innate - Specific mental functions and personality characteristics can be precisely localized in modular brain
regions
- External bumps in the skull correlate with personality characteristics
The ‘born criminal’ (Lombroso)
Studied anatomical features of the human body to identify a physical criminal type
Theory of Atavism
- Criminals are biologically inferior
- Based on Darwin’s theory of Evolution
Three types:
- Born criminals: characterized by sloping forehead and asymmetry of the face
- Insane criminals: developmentally disabled and mentally ill
- Criminaloids: occasional criminals under certain situations (majority of offenders)
Scientific Positivism (Lombroso)
Interested in explaining the ‘cause’ of offending – saw causes as lying outside the individual’s control
(deterministic approach)
Cued a shift away from Classical School toward quest for scientific laws
Body types and crime (Sheldon, 1940-50s)
- Endomorphs: relaxed, sociable and fond of eating
- Ectomorphs: artistic, introverted and sensitive
- Mesomorphs: energetic, courageous and assertive
Studied delinquent males and found higher rates of mesomorphs
Body type and crime (Glueck and Glueck)
- Found higher rates of mesomorphs amongst delinquent group
- More likely to be characterized by traits associated with aggression and strength
Critiques of Individual Theories
• Methodological weaknesses:
o Small samples, representatives, comparison groups
o Overly deterministic – either biology or psychology completely determines
o Equate correlation with causation
o Inference problem – who does it apply to?
o Spatial distribution problem
• Criminal behaviour reduced to a single cause
• Unclear what role personality characteristics play
• How do we correct ‘biological defects’?
Heredity of crime
Early theories did not properly account for possible influence of the environment
Later developments separated impact of genes from impact of environment e.g. twin and adoption studies
Early twin studies (Christiansen)
Studied twins born between 1881 and 1910 – determined if one or both twins had become criminal
- Male identical twins: where one twin sentenced, other twin sentenced 36% of time
- Male fraternal twins: where one twin sentenced, other twin sentenced 12% of time
Adoption studies (Hutchings and Mednick, 1977)
Examined all non-famil male adoptions between 1927-1941
- Adopted boys more likely to commit crimes when their biological fathers had also committed crimes
- When both adoptive and biological